Today's Los Angeles Times crossword by C.C. Burnikel includes
Cares: GIVESAHOOT
Girl who lost her sheep: LITTLEBOPEEP
Get lovey-dovey: BILLANDCOO
Short online message visible only to approved followers: PRIVATETWEET
I have several Disney shirts. One of my favorites shows Donald Duck and says "I don't tweet---I quack." (My very favorite shows a belligerent Donald in his fighting pose and says "I flunked my anger management class" but that one is not relevant to today's crossword.)
"Six-sided state" is UTAH. A hexagon is a six-sided shape with six straight lines of equal length and a 120° angle between each two sides. Utah is definitely not a hexagon but can we still call it a "six-sided state"? And if we consider that a "side" does not have to be a straight line, then is California a 550-sided state? In each location where the coastline juts in or out, does that constitute a different side of the state? Is Utah really six-sided or is it four-sided with two of the sides turning inward? I have to think about this for a while.
Pawel Fludzinski's Daily News crossword includes
1/24 of an octave: QUARTERTONE
Skill useful for handling an emergency: QUICKTHINKING
Period of undivided attention, as with a spouse or child: QUALITYTIME
Noted Max Planck contribution to physics: QUANTUMTHEORY
"Babies (aww...)" and an aural hint to the four theme answers is CUTIES ("QT's").
The Universal crossword editors never object when the puzzles include a particular word two or three times. Today's is no exception. It includes SKIPPINGCLASSES, JUMPATTHECHANCE and HOPSKIPANDAJUMP. The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary defines "hop, skip and a jump" as "A short distance: It's just a hop, skip and a jump from my house to yours. This expression, dating from the early 1700s, originally referred to an exercise or game involving these movements but by the mid-1800s was also being used figuratively for the short distance so covered." I wonder if the exercise involved those three movements in that exact order. We never hear anyone say "a jump, skip and a hop" or "a skip, hop and a jump." It's always "a hop, skip and a jump." Never any variation!
